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Seemann's Historic Cities #19
Yesterday's Cincinnati: Special Bicentennial Edition
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 16, 2018
Great old photos of Cincinnati
July 21, 2024
Nice pictures but the book is based on limited research and totally missed two urgent components – the lives of people in Cincinnati and almost any touch of diversity. Nearly every picture and person mentioned in the book was a white male. While a history book of Cincinnati up to 1950 isn’t going to be based predominately women or people of color, this book seemed to work to focus only one white males with few exceptions. It is deeply disturbing, especially since it is written by a long-time journalist.
Feck mentions at the start of the book that “so-called Indians settled the area around the time of Christ birth,” tipping his hat that they were “Moundbuilders.” He reports that people do not know where they came from but says that artifacts from those times have been found. He wrote that they disappeared about the time when the English arrived in Virginia. The book then shifts to those coming west and settling the place later called Ohio, conflicts with tribes, and lots of killing then a settlement with the new settlers learning. As throughout the book, there is scant coverage of what it was like to live in the area or the lives of those who were members of tribes, even after a settlement was reached.
As in any other history book of Cincinnati, this one speaks to how meat packing dominated the industry of Cincinnati and how pigs consumed the streets until people consumed the pigs. He mentions that the nickname of the Queen City was Porkopolis. Feck talks about how the arrival of Germans changed the city and swelled the city by over two thirds to a population of 161,044 then, twenty years later, a quarter of a million making Cincinnati the sixth-largest city in our country. Still, he doesn’t share why Germans were taking the long voyage, why they selected southern Ohio, nor what their lives were like in the newfound country even though 28% of the city was German by 1841. The one thing he did list was the German’s interest in exercise caused the school system to have one of the earliest and most aggressive physical education programs in our country.
While he mentioned that Irish started to arrive in the 1840’s due to the potato famine, saying they arrived at the river then disbursed, not much is said about their journey or life in their newfound city. The author also reports that Cincinnati had about sixty-six hundred African Americans by 1850 but says little of them. He did admit that while the city was the first stop of the Underground Railroad, most continued onto Canada. Even then, he didn’t mention the Slave Fugitive Act as the reason that formerly enslaved people couldn’t end their journey safely in Cincinnati.
The book took the traditional and simply chronological approach. Throughout, it speaks to transportation. The author missed that often Cincinnati was a bit behind the times – enjoying the power of their river late, building canals after northern canals helped Cleveland overtake Cincinnati’s population and becoming the fifth largest city in the country before that proud city’s decline, starting a subway late and ending it (due to WWI and not continuing it due to inflation, both points missing in this book), and ending street cars like many cities only to bring them back. A picture (on page 72) really told the story of how the canal continued long after its usefulness until the city decided not to use the ditch for a subway and build Central Parkway over it. The fight over building the Roebling book is totally missing. The book did fairly cover the important “inclined-plane railways” that were constructed between 1875 and 1890 starting with the Price Hill incline. These were critical in the expansion of the city and ran until the mid-1940’s. The book barely noted that the beautiful new railroad terminal, built in 1933, would become obsolete due to flight and cars within the next decade or two.
Feck also captured some of the energy and excitement over the “niceties” that often were started in the 1870’s – the $100,000 bond passed to build stunning parks, “The Fountain,” the German looking Music Hall, the Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel observatory that rivaled the one built in Russia. The federal government built a stunning Post Office on Fourth and Vine in 1886, the Hebrew Union College started by Dr. Isaac Wise in 1875, and the Cincinnati Art Museum opening their doors after a decade of work in 1886.
The courthouse riot of March 28 and 29, 1884, the flood of 1884, huge flood of 1913 (also flooding Dayton and Columbus), and 1913 streetcar strike were also covered briefly. The author has a line about how German language was taken off the course agenda at Cincinnati grade schools but didn’t report the anti-German bias or other changes occurring like street renaming. Government was also covered – good and bad. This book didn’t capture what a character Republican George Cox was nor the later coalition that brought together reform in such a unique way with the Charter Committee, otherwise known as the Charterites.
It was fascinating to read how nuns took control of the formerly United States Marine Hospital at Sixth and Lock in 1866, calling it Good Samaritan. That’s a fact I’ve never read before. The author also noted that due to the rich diversity of industry in Cincinnati, citizens escaped the level of pain felt in most of our country.
One of the few women highlighted in the book was Anna Marie Hahn, the first woman put to death in Ohio’s electric chair for murdering five people.
Coming out of the war realized many other new approaches including WLWT venturing from radio to offer the area’s first television station and the building of a stadium on the shores of the riverfront. Cincinnati was also hit with a telephone workers strike in 1946. The first television station was seen on June 4, 1946. The following year, on September 21, 1947, the Reds played the Phillies on television.
The true value of this book are the many black and white photographs of the last century.
Feck mentions at the start of the book that “so-called Indians settled the area around the time of Christ birth,” tipping his hat that they were “Moundbuilders.” He reports that people do not know where they came from but says that artifacts from those times have been found. He wrote that they disappeared about the time when the English arrived in Virginia. The book then shifts to those coming west and settling the place later called Ohio, conflicts with tribes, and lots of killing then a settlement with the new settlers learning. As throughout the book, there is scant coverage of what it was like to live in the area or the lives of those who were members of tribes, even after a settlement was reached.
As in any other history book of Cincinnati, this one speaks to how meat packing dominated the industry of Cincinnati and how pigs consumed the streets until people consumed the pigs. He mentions that the nickname of the Queen City was Porkopolis. Feck talks about how the arrival of Germans changed the city and swelled the city by over two thirds to a population of 161,044 then, twenty years later, a quarter of a million making Cincinnati the sixth-largest city in our country. Still, he doesn’t share why Germans were taking the long voyage, why they selected southern Ohio, nor what their lives were like in the newfound country even though 28% of the city was German by 1841. The one thing he did list was the German’s interest in exercise caused the school system to have one of the earliest and most aggressive physical education programs in our country.
While he mentioned that Irish started to arrive in the 1840’s due to the potato famine, saying they arrived at the river then disbursed, not much is said about their journey or life in their newfound city. The author also reports that Cincinnati had about sixty-six hundred African Americans by 1850 but says little of them. He did admit that while the city was the first stop of the Underground Railroad, most continued onto Canada. Even then, he didn’t mention the Slave Fugitive Act as the reason that formerly enslaved people couldn’t end their journey safely in Cincinnati.
The book took the traditional and simply chronological approach. Throughout, it speaks to transportation. The author missed that often Cincinnati was a bit behind the times – enjoying the power of their river late, building canals after northern canals helped Cleveland overtake Cincinnati’s population and becoming the fifth largest city in the country before that proud city’s decline, starting a subway late and ending it (due to WWI and not continuing it due to inflation, both points missing in this book), and ending street cars like many cities only to bring them back. A picture (on page 72) really told the story of how the canal continued long after its usefulness until the city decided not to use the ditch for a subway and build Central Parkway over it. The fight over building the Roebling book is totally missing. The book did fairly cover the important “inclined-plane railways” that were constructed between 1875 and 1890 starting with the Price Hill incline. These were critical in the expansion of the city and ran until the mid-1940’s. The book barely noted that the beautiful new railroad terminal, built in 1933, would become obsolete due to flight and cars within the next decade or two.
Feck also captured some of the energy and excitement over the “niceties” that often were started in the 1870’s – the $100,000 bond passed to build stunning parks, “The Fountain,” the German looking Music Hall, the Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel observatory that rivaled the one built in Russia. The federal government built a stunning Post Office on Fourth and Vine in 1886, the Hebrew Union College started by Dr. Isaac Wise in 1875, and the Cincinnati Art Museum opening their doors after a decade of work in 1886.
The courthouse riot of March 28 and 29, 1884, the flood of 1884, huge flood of 1913 (also flooding Dayton and Columbus), and 1913 streetcar strike were also covered briefly. The author has a line about how German language was taken off the course agenda at Cincinnati grade schools but didn’t report the anti-German bias or other changes occurring like street renaming. Government was also covered – good and bad. This book didn’t capture what a character Republican George Cox was nor the later coalition that brought together reform in such a unique way with the Charter Committee, otherwise known as the Charterites.
It was fascinating to read how nuns took control of the formerly United States Marine Hospital at Sixth and Lock in 1866, calling it Good Samaritan. That’s a fact I’ve never read before. The author also noted that due to the rich diversity of industry in Cincinnati, citizens escaped the level of pain felt in most of our country.
One of the few women highlighted in the book was Anna Marie Hahn, the first woman put to death in Ohio’s electric chair for murdering five people.
Coming out of the war realized many other new approaches including WLWT venturing from radio to offer the area’s first television station and the building of a stadium on the shores of the riverfront. Cincinnati was also hit with a telephone workers strike in 1946. The first television station was seen on June 4, 1946. The following year, on September 21, 1947, the Reds played the Phillies on television.
The true value of this book are the many black and white photographs of the last century.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 29, 2022
Picked this up from the recycle bin at FPL. A well-written little tome on the beginning of Cincinnati through the 1970s. Published in 1975 as it is the Special Bicentennial Edition. Enjoyed it. Though historic, the writer had an easy style.
August 13, 2017
Book gives only basic snippets of Cincinnati's history, but it is worth it for the pictures.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews